MM: You were earlier this year in charge of a Method Acting Workshop for Danish actors in Copenhagen, could you tell me a little bit about that experience in general?

RC: The workshop was about 18 people, about 7 hours a day for 2 weeks - Monday through Friday. I found that it was quite challenging. Many of the actors in the workshop were professional actors, and in a couple of cases professional singers who were moving into acting, so the level of work was actually quite high. A lot of the participants were very skilled, so it was a challenge for me and it made me really focus and concentrate on what I was doing and how I applied the Method as a technique. In the first few days I taught them some basic sense memory exercises and a very detailed relaxation that I have developed. The relaxation is a necessary preliminary exercise to have them see how they can attain creative states - states of being mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually - that they can start to apply to the character in the scene work.

MM: How was it working with Danish actors compared to working with American actors?

RC: I thought it was very refreshing. The Danish actors were really quite demanding. They were hungry to know this technique and they were full of questions. They were very willing to experiment - most of them. I find that American actors also will be that way, but there is - I don’t want to be negative about American actors, obviously I have worked with some marvelous ones- but percentage-wise I will say that I was really woken up by the work with the Danish actors. You know there is a tendency in America that people just want to be movie stars - learn enough just to walk and talk and look pretty. I am not saying all of them, but some of them, and I didn’t find that attitude at all in Denmark. They were all very interested in the art of acting.

MM: Did you find it an extra challenge that the participants all came from different backgrounds – training-wise and artistically? Some came from the State Acting Academies, some had training from abroad, some were not conscious of their technique, some had their own, etc. And what’s more is that the whole method consciousness - not method restrained to the Strasberg method - but an acting method is not such a dominating issue amongst actors in Denmark as it is, say in the USA?

RC: I encountered various kinds of skills andtechniques. The ones that had been through the formal theatre schools – Acting Academies - in Denmark, they actually were very different from each other, but there was a tendency on their part to be skilled in terms of voice and movement. They tended to be very clever, but rather external - a bit artificial. However, they had good ideas about character and about performance, so that was the plus side. In most cases they seemed to understand - particularly the older ones - that there was something missing in their technique, there was this feeling of not really living the experience of the character, but basically what I call flying off their talent, which means being clever and a bit artificial. And audiences accept that, they even tend to celebrate the actors for it. But the same audience might not really get the story or the play. They are not genuinely touched by what they see, they don’t identify with it. And that is really what art, and the Method technique, is all about, that it - or rather the actors that apply the Method in their work - want to draw the audience so into it – so into the performance - that the audience feels that they are experiencing the play and what the characters experience. We don’t want the audience just watching the actor and the play as a spectator and being dazzled, we – the Method - because the actor is experiencing the role in such a way – want to draw the audience in and engage them emotionally. My feeling is if you want spectacle and want to be dazzled by performers without necessarily feeling the soul of it then go to see Cirque de Soleil, and I do for just that reason. But not for Ibsen, Chekhov, Tennessee Williams, not even for Shakespeare.

A couple of the younger participants that had been through the theatre academies were a little more resistant at first towards the internal technique, which the Method work supplies, they were very attached to their cleverness - they have won applause with it, I think - it took a good 3 to 5 days - to break through. I found that an interesting challenge. I have encountered it before with actors, but because it was an intensive workshop, I got the resistance all day long, every day. But then we would do a particular exercise and apply it to the work and I would direct them while they were doing a monologue or a scene - which I know is a little irritating to them - but at the same time everyone that was watching them could see the difference from the way they wanted to do it in their clever way and the way they would do it when they were forced to actually experience it. And then their talent and the skills they develop at the Academy do come in handy, because they do move well, they do speak well. And once you can get them to experience the role those things just simply are very good expressive tools. And they could - for the most part - themselves see by the end of the first week that there was something in this - this method work – for them. Then they were full of questions, like: how do I do this? How do I apply that? How can I experience this more fully?, and so forth.

MM: Peter Gantzler said something to me during the work shop which I found very beautiful – He said he thought it was striking how you don’t "stand in your own way." If that makes sense in English?! - Man står ikke i vejen for sig selv - in Danish. Did you find that some of the Danish actors stood in their own way as actors, creatively, by for instance intellectualizing the work, by being vain, by being clever and so forth.

RC: It is an interesting thing in acting - and I suppose in all the arts - that while actors are celebrated for being egotistical - and I suppose we are in our lives ... more than most people - when you are actually acting well the ego disappears. When you make a total connection to the character, the circumstances and the dilemma, then your ego, your identity, your self-consciousness evaporates. And we often stand in our own way by trying to advertise our own creativity, trying to advertise our glamour, our humor, our beauty, our cleverness or whatever it is that we think our strong points are. Those things most certainly come in the way of truly experiencing the role.

Creativity in acting comes on the back end, not on the front end. This is something that is very hard for talented people to get at first. But acting is an interpretive art - unless you are doing improvisation where it is primarily creative - not that actors are not creative, we are, we are very creative, but composing, Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovski, that is a creative art, writing is a creative art, painting, anything where you invent the story from an original idea, is technically a creative art. But a violinist in an orchestra - maybe even the great Jascha Heifetz, who is sublimely creative - he is still interpreting Tchaikovski. So in a technical sense acting is still an interpretive art, and what that means is .... let’s continue the example with the violinist: He first has to learn the notes that Tchaikovski wrote, and for instance if you hear Opus 35, you can hear 10 different violinists and they are all great or near great, and they all play the notes as written by Tchaikovski, there is nobody that changes them, however they are all incredibly different. And if you listen to Haifetz doing it - it is - well he first has to learn the notes, then he has to figure out why Tchaikovski wrote them that way, he has to do a bit of imagining, he has to imagine "what was Tchaikovski’s state of mind or emotions when he wrote this?" I mean when I listen to this piece I see all these Russians river valleys, and then a triumphal march, and a lot of things, and I am sure that Haifetz has his own vision, but he can only really apply what he thinks and feels when he has discovered as much about Tchaikovski and the work as he can. First he has to connect with Tchaikovski’s creativity before applying his own. And the technicalities of the passages of the notes - which compares exactly to the lines, the words and the actions for an actor - once that’s done, once you can actually play the piece and put it together, even though it is not interesting yet, you are playing Tchaikovski. Then you start to see what doing that ignites in your feelings, then your creativity really starts to come through, so it is in the later end of the process that you become creative instead of the beginning of the process. The problem in interpretive art for talented people is that your talent wants to immediately be creative - right away. And you haven’t done the research yet, you haven’t learned the notes yet, and this is what I find with people who are extremely talented is that it is hard for them to be patient.

There were a couple of people at the workshop who were not so trained, and were even a little - I guess you could say clumsy or awkward, and it was interesting with them, particularly in one case, the person had a great deal of inner life, a great deal of soul waiting to come out, and because they were a bit awkward they weren’t too concerned with external technique, they weren’t trying to be clever, and what came out of them fairly quickly was very, very interesting, and really started to be an experience of the life of the character. Of course they don’t have the refinement of the people who went to the Danish Acting Academy, but depending on the part they don’t necessarily need it, or they can develop it on their own, they can go to voice classes or movement classes etc.

MM: What do you look for when you work with actors? And how do you define talent in an actor?

RC: I would say number one, or rather there are a couple of number ones: First of all a very clear and confident physical connection, so that their expressiveness is very centered and very grounded. That the physique exactly illustrates the impulse that they have, so that they are not overdoing or underdoing things with their body. They can just sit there and have power. Power is very important! Somebody who realizes their power, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be the power of a lion, it could be the power of a court jester, it could be an idiosyncratic kind of power, a funny kind of power, but it is a power and they are centered in it. Many people have several kinds of power that they can bring together - that is one thing I am looking for. Another thing is a very rich inner life. Someone who feels a lot, imagines a lot, thinks a lot, and is unique in that way. And there is nobody really like them in that way, there is something about them that I haven’t found in anybody else. Another is somebody who has a very strong connection to what we share as human beings, so that they are perceptive and empathetic. And a little bit - I have to admit - people who are a little bit, even though they may be shy in life, people who like to show off. Let’s face it, we are show-offs to some extent. Showing off has to be channeled so that it becomes organic and experiential. People who go in to acting just to show off generally have to be broken down a bit first, because they are artificial, but it is not a bad thing to be in the beginning as long as you are not married to it, as long as you can see that the artificiality is there.

MM: Can you tell me a bit about your own background for becoming an actor, and then later director and Method acting teacher?

RC: I wanted to be an actor when I was about 14. I did a couple of things, high school plays, etc. in Los Angeles where I grew up. God it is hard to think that far back. I found myself, even at that stage, roles that were not the usual thing. I wasn’t that crazy to play Romeo, but rather people who were crazy, drunks, strange in some way. I suppose I just wanted to shock people - I was a teenager. But because most people weren’t interested in doing those things I got to do them. I have no idea whether I was any good at that age. I also had a love of culture and history and the arts, really I am very curious...about the world, things like athletics, they way they train .... all sorts of things, but particularly people reaching down in themselves to do something extraordinary. And then I got accepted to UCLA (University of California) and their theatre department. But before I went there I took a summer program at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, and really became so fascinated with Method acting that I continued with them even though I was at UCLA and got in some trouble with the drama department because I was young and a bit arrogant. And tended to throw things back at them from my "superior training" at the Lee Strasberg Institute. (Laughter) At first I worked with Walter Lott and Bill Traylor. It was when I was cast by Strasberg himself in a play that I got to work directly with him. John David Garfield was directing it and Strasberg was overlooking it. I got a good part in the play, and we ended up taking it to the Actors Studio. I was pretty young at the time - 18. And after the run at the Actors Studio we took it to a theatre, the Evergreen Stage and had quite a nice run with it. Carol Goodhart, who now teaches at the HB studio, (theatre school in New York’s West Village, which was run by Uta Hagen, who recently died) was playing the lead. And she introduced me to her agent who signed me, and sent me out. Then I got the lead in a CBS pilot, called "If I Love You, Am I Trapped Forever?" which did very well, and was bought by CBS as a series. And then I started working like crazy, and I went all over the place. So they kicked me out of UCLA. The dean called me in and said: "What are you doing? You are missing classes! Decide if you are an actor or a student." And then I said "I am both" and then he said "Well you can’t be" and so then I said "Okay, then I am an actor." Which in a way I regret, and in a way I don’t. I was in New York doing theatre, went back to L.A. and did more films and television, and started to do a lot of theatre also in Los Angeles. While working with Strasberg, who was magnificent, I had started working with Peggy Feury, who was a teacher at the Strasberg Institute.

MM: What was it that made him magnificent? It must probably have been much different working with him than the picture you get from reading his books.

RC: He could kind of diagnose an actor, and then come up with a creative thing for them to do, either an exercise or a direction that would solve the problem and would open up the actor creatively to find an interesting solution. He had a pretty uncanny ability to do that. And he would immediately see their patterns. He would see where they had a block in a certain way or that they were too vain, or he would see that they weren’t willing to do something in a character way, if it was advanced work, because they were afraid to take on those characteristics. He was like the Russians - very into extraordinary concentration. Which is something you get from most Russian theatre people in a Stanislavski mode. But then I started studying with Peggy Feury. I found her absolutely brilliant!

MM: I am not sure that Peggy Feury would be familiar to Danish theatre people and readers, could you tell me a bit about her?!

RC: Peggy left the Institute after Strasberg died. So after a few years I was in Peggy’s master class at the Loft Studio. There were about 12 of us in the master class, and I would say that half of us went on to be very famous, not myself. But in this class, in this master class, were Sean Penn, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jeff Goldblum, Angelica Huston, and a few other future stars. We were and are all working actors. And it was extraordinarily wonderful and challenging to be in that class, and the level of work was just beyond belief, it was amazing. And she had developed all of us! She was extraordinary. And really a lot of what I do as an instructor comes from her. I have developed a lot of things myself as well, and a lot of what Peggy Feury did came directly from Strasberg and Sanford Meisner. So in my study with Peggy I got quite a bit of Meisner as well as Strasberg. But she was really kind of a universal genius. It seemed like she knew every book, every play, every piece of music, every work of art ever created, and all the history behind it and the culture, and the politics. She was a very interesting woman, she was about 50 when I started working with her, and she had narcolepsy, which is a sleeping sickness. So she would fall asleep during scenes. So the big challenge would be not to make her fall asleep, because if she did you knew your scene was boring .... She didn’t do it deliberately (laughter). But from her I got a real love of researching the time and period of a given play. And she wasn’t afraid of using the Method with any style whether it was absurdist or avant-garde, farce, experimental, so it was not only the obvious things like Tennessee Williams and so forth. So the Method people that say the Method is only for a certain style of acting, they are quite wrong. The Method is really a base technique for everything. And I fully believe that other techniques can be layered on to it. Certainly physical techniques, may it be Jacques Lecoq, or Asian techniques, Grotowski or others, together with the Method it just makes it more experiential and organic, with the Method they can become gloriously vocal and physical. I am not a fundamentalist.

MM: So what happened? Did you continue the work with Peggy? How did you start directing?

RC: Well, I studied with her and then became her assistant for 6-7 years. I started directing plays when I was 25. I had been acting a lot, but I was often a bit type cast in Hollywood in films, theatre and television. I wasn’t getting tired of acting at all, maybe just the same kind of roles. But I became drawn to directing, perhaps because I also worked as a still photographer. And I wanted to combine this visual way of seeing things with my acting - theatre - abilities. So I went to UCLA film school. So then I wasn’t able to study with Peggy even though I saw her quite a bit. And then she was killed in a car accident. And .... I had just come back to working with her, and we were rehearsing a production of "The Devil’s Disciple" by Bernard Shaw, where I was doing the main part. We had been working on this production off and on for years. So I was very excited about doing that, with her as the director of course, and then about a month before we were going to open, she was killed. So this was pretty devastating for me... (Long pause)

But nevertheless I carried on. I continued at the film school. And really quite enjoyed directing film, and I started to direct more theatre too. I kind of fell in love with directing. And did a lot of video, some film and some stage. And then I went around, because now I was wanted at the studios because of what I had done in the film school. I was also developing scripts with Paramount, and with a company within Paramount and this and that and the other, but after about a year I got very tired of it, because everybody was on cocaine, making big promises and not keeping them. So then I decided - I will do theatre and film in New York, and if it is going to be film, then it is going to be independent, otherwise I will do a lot of theatre. This was very difficult, mostly because theatre in New York doesn’t pay very well, unless you are doing a big show on Broadway. So I realized that I had to teach alongside directing and acting. I mainly started teaching just to make money. I taught screenwriting and video production, and then I got my position at the Strasberg Institute. But teaching and directing are hard to combine with acting, because you don’t have time to go to all the auditions.

And now the plan is that I am going to direct "Three Days of Rain" in Denmark. And after having done the workshop in Denmark I am very excited about this project. Just as I am excited about the up-coming workshop in Copenhagen in January 2005. This is all part of a bigger plan where I am going to be giving workshops around Europe, and hopefully direct more in Europe - that’s the focus for me and for my wife, Alejandra Orozco, who also is a director and an actor, and our studio ITNY, where I mainly teach and direct using the method and the additions to it I have developed.

MM: Could you briefly - before we finish - tell me a bit about what you find are the strengths and weaknesses of the method?

RC: The strength of it is that it is a system by which you can become inspired every time you work, or let’s say nearly every time you work. Which is what actors have been looking for ever since we started – forever. Any actor, any talented actor, will at times do an absolutely marvelous performance, and then the next night it will be mediocre. There is a famous story about Laurence Olivier when he was doing King Lear. And he is supposed to have been the greatest King Lear you ever saw, and this particular night, he was magnificent. And all his friends and colleagues who were in the theatre who saw him - and found that it was beyond belief - they went to his dressing room to congratulate him. And when they came in he was throwing things around the dressing room. So they said: "What is wrong? You were so amazing, you were great!" And he said: "Yes I know, but I don’t know how I did it!" And this problem was what Stanislavski was trying to solve. And the Method does solve this problem, I mean of course it doesn’t entirely solve it, but it solves it to a great extent. Because it supplies the actor with things that you internally can depend on, and not just externally.

Weaknesses? I don’t know if it has any weaknesses when it is properly done and understood. I think it is the improper understanding of it that has a lot of weaknesses. Some actors think that it is a method style, that you scratch and mumble when you use the method. That it makes you moody and not really communicate that well with the other actors. But that is not at all Method Acting. That is simply a convention taken from films in the 1950’s, where people like Marlon Brando and James Dean were playing alienated youth. It was also the first time in America that we saw working class characters as the focus on film, and they were playing legitimate characters that were alienated, in torn T-shirts and working on cars and stuff like that. But it was kind of a sexy thing when they were doing it at the time in a working class way. So people were starting to say: "Well that is a cool style," and imitators would play just the style, even when playing Lords and Ladies.

MM: In Denmark the conception of the method often has something to do with that you have to live as a drunk when you are playing an alcholic, become fat if you play a mafia boss etc. Banal examples, but do you get the idea? Is that also one of the misconceptions in the States?

RC: It is a misinterpretation both here and in the States. But I will say though, that it does help to do those things. I mean Robert di Niro drove a taxi for a month before he started filming "Taxi Driver". Now you really believe that he is a taxi driver, because without looking he can do his meter, his gestures, his movements, he knows all these things. So that is legitimate! But you don’t have to do it. I mean I have played a killer several times. And to my knowledge I haven’t killed anyone in real life yet, at least not consciously. But I can imagine being a killer. Which is why I have developed the "imagined experience" exercise, an exercise that replaces when you don’t have real experience. Because I think it has to be a combination. Obviously we didn’t live in the 15 Hundreds or the 14 Hundreds, so when you are doing period pieces you have to imagine that experience. Of course there is a certain amount of research you can do, but if you are going to walk around in those clothes in New York City, you are going to be laughed at. People are not going to deal with you as they did back then obviously. So you have to make approximations, you have to use your imagination working on the role.

MM: So you keep working on and developing the Method and its exercises?

RC: Absolutely! It is an evolutionary thing. Any technique that gets stuck - is a dead technique. The challenge for a teacher is that you can work with a beginner and with an advanced actor, and they can actually have the same problem, the advanced actor has just learned to hide it better. If they want to actually solve it, sometimes it can help to see how a beginning actor is working to solve it, so they themselves can try to work on it, bring it out in the open instead of hiding it. And this is actually why it is good that there were so many different actors on different levels at the workshop in Copenhagen. I believe in not being embarrassed about your problems as an actor. I think an actor - even though they may be a celebrated actor - should be willing to be terrible in order to expose the problem and then solve it in a workshop or in a rehearsal-work situation. That’s the problem, we get egotistical. We know we can get by, by faking it.

MM: And that is probably what Peter meant by saying that some actors stand in their own way?

RC: That’s right. You have to be courageous. That’s why the public can’t come in to classes or to rehearsals, because the actors should be willing to be uncomfortable at times, awkward and awful at times. Because it is only through exposing it they can get through it, and the actor does not want to expose their laboratory work to the general public, who will not understand that it is just a rehearsal.

MM: But even so the workshop in Copenhagen will be open to theatre people - who know how delicate it can be to expose oneself in a workshop situation - every Friday?

RC: Yes. Hopefully they won’t be judgmental, even though it is practically impossible not to be. But I will be working with the actors during those Fridays so they can see changes, hopefully open their eyes to how the Method works. And the audience will be theatre people, who know what a rehearsal is.

MM: That’s all I wanted to ask you. I am looking forward to the work in Copenhagen.

RC: I love it there!

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